"It shows me that you are a man with a hard heart, determined only to get your own way."

Last week Salama was jailed for a further 12 months for his continuing failure to comply with court orders to return his daughter to her mother.

The couple met in Sharm el Sheikh in 2005 and were married in Egypt the following year, before moving to Leeds in 2007.

They separated in 2009 but agreed that Elsa should continue to see her family in Egypt.

Ms Button has a custody order in Egypt and the support of the Child Abduction Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Her lawyer, Kate Bannerjee, who heads the children's department at Jones Myers and is a panel member of the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit, warns that parental child abduction is on the increase.

"The Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Child Abduction Section is receiving an average of four calls per day," she said.

"Understanding of parental child abduction is alarmingly low and cases can take years to resolve."

Ms Button has kept a pile of unopened Christmas presents in her daughter's room.

"I know that she wants to be back home with Mummy," she told us.

"My mission in life is to find my daughter and, no matter how long that takes, to be here for her.

"I want her to come back and see how her life was, so I do everything I can to find her but also to maintain the life she had, and that's what I get up for every day."